It’s well and truly autumn in Cambridge, and my mind has turned to travelling to Edinburgh. I have an invitation to attend a Burns Night Supper on the 17th January.
Rabbie Burns is the national poet of Scotland. We studied his poems at school in their original form. I defy you not to read this in Lowland Scottish.
To A Mouse
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a pannic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!
For extra authenticity, omit the final ’t's
I have a confession to make.
I’ve done no writing since last Sunday.
Yes, it’s been a busy week but that’s not the reason.
Here’s the problem. I thought the end of Book Two would meld easily into the beginning of Book Three. And it doesn’t.
So I put off working on it. And I put it off. And I put it off and suddenly an entire week has passed.
This evening, I vow I will get back to it. The first ten chapters of ‘Now Is The Time Of Monsters’ should be easy to write. We will be back on familiar territory. The alternate London of 1794.
Last Sunday I invited you to join my Charles N Palmer Facebook Group and four of you did. We now have 227 members.
The password is Jack
This is where we thrashed out the book name, book cover and blurb for ‘Beyond The Shining Portals’. I’d like your help with Book Two, ‘The Half-Life Girl’.
The Half-Life Girl is Elektra. She appears in ‘Beyond The Shining Portals’ just after the halfway point.
Physically, Elektra is about 5'8", she has short black hair and has olive, Mediterranean-toned skin. She is in her late teens.
Emotionally, She is optimistic and asks a lot of questions. She is kind to others.
Her problem. In the Oracle in the Vault of Heaven, she learns that she is a half-life girl. She is the first self-aware half-life girl and she wants to break away from her fate.
The Maiden created half-life girls as dynatoi-killers. The dynatoi are fascinated by half-life girls because they can't tell what they are thinking. Likewise, the half-life girls find the dynatoi extremely attractive.
However, half-life girls can be enraged by the dynatoi. They love and hate them. And in that rage they can kill a dynatoi.
Elektra does not want that future, so one strand of 'The Half-Life Girl' is about how Elektra fights against that destiny.